According to his Facebook page, Brandon Eley is from the Bronx, studied at Brooklyn College and now lives in Dallas.

But Eley isn’t real.

His fake Facebook profile is part of a more than $1 million legal and public relations campaign waged by the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System in its battle with the Nasher Sculpture Center over Museum Tower.

The campaign was orchestrated by a $500-per-hour lawyer, executed in part by a former television anchorman and backed by the pension system — a government institution that relies heavily on taxpayer funds.

The pension system’s lawyers have predicted that only litigation will resolve the fight over sunlight reflected into the Nasher by the 42-story condominium tower, which the pension system owns.

They’ve worked to prepare for that litigation by attempting to shape public perception, hiring scientific experts, keeping information secret and playing hardball with the pension fund’s critics.

But email records show that on at least one occasion, Tettamant followed the online commenting closely and, through an attorney, was in touch with Snyder.

A lawyer for the pension system, responding to inquiries about those emails, said Tettamant was tending to a sick family member and unavailable. He reiterated Tettamant’s assertion that he was unaware of Snyder’s efforts.

Pension spokeswoman Rebecca Shaw said that Museum Tower is a “separate company” that paid for Snyder’s work. That company, however, was formed and is controlled by the pension system.

Snyder acknowledged creating the online personas. When first approached about them two weeks ago, he defended their use as part of a larger effort embraced by the pension system to “facilitate a community dialogue.”

“Social media is an integral part of this information process and open to anyone who wishes to participate,” he wrote, “and they may participate in anonymity if they choose to do so.”

He said the past 18 months have subjected the pension system to “exceptional circumstances.”

“The system responded with a comprehensive team of experts that included scientists, engineers, architects, construction and material specialists, communication and legal counsel,” Snyder said in an email.

On Thursday, Snyder distanced himself from the pension system. He was an independent contractor, he said, and the comments reflected his personal frustrations.

“They were not known to, or authorized by, the owners of Museum Tower or anyone else,” he wrote.

An ethics expert contacted by The News said that, speaking generally, it would be a violation of public trust if a government institution were to knowingly create fake online personas to sway public opinion.

“Information and arguments are really good,” said Rita Kirk, who directs the Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility at SMU. “But that’s neither. That’s direct manipulation.”

Social media

The fight between the pension fund and the Nasher over glare reached a turning point in late October, about a year after it began. A mediator agreed to by both sides, Dallas attorney Tom Luce, abruptly quit. He said Tettamant was not acting in good faith toward a resolution.

Luce had requested that both sides avoid public comment on the issue. With his resignation, the media blackout dissolved.

The following week, on Nov. 2, Snyder created two Facebook profiles of nonexistent people.

Snyder retired as a news anchor in 2010 after a 30-year career at NBC affiliate KXAS-TV (Channel 5). The following year, he and two others formed the strategic communications firm Ropewalkers, which advertises that “discretion is our first priority and our guiding principle.”

In addition to Eley’s Facebook profile, Snyder created another under the name Barry Schwarz.

Three weeks later, Snyder went to work in the comments section of a Nov. 21 D Magazine blog item. Another commenter had accused Tettamant of bullying the Nasher.

“The bully in this equation has been the Nasher’s carefully crafted PR campaign through surrogates like Mayor Rawlings, Tom Luce (who took the side of the Nasher instead of being an independent go between) and rich arrogant friends like you, who have tried to do character assassination on Richard Tettamant,” Snyder wrote, posing as Schwarz.

When a commenter accused Schwarz of being “knee deep” in the issue and perhaps working for Museum Tower, he denied it.

“Sad. You can’t deal with the truth so you attack someone personally,” Schwarz replied. “The only thing I am knee deep in is research. I get interested in things and do my own looking.”

On Sunday, Feb. 17, The News published a story about the pension system’s large portfolio of luxury real estate investments that include Museum Tower.

One online commenter, who posted under the name “Wylie H Dallas,” was particularly critical of pension officials. He accused them of mismanaging the more than $3 billion fund and placing taxpayers at risk.

Snyder, posing alternately as Schwarz and Eley, quickly struck back, setting up a back-and-forth that continued through the day.

Snyder’s fictional personas frequently referred to information from a report by the Texas Association of Public Employee Retirement Systems. Three weeks earlier, Tettamant had emailed Snyder a copy of the report.

That afternoon, Tettamant was following the comments.

At 12:55 p.m., he sent an email to the pension system’s main outside attorney, Gary Lawson of Strasburger & Price, with the subject line “ATTORNEY CLIENT PRIVILEGE.”

“Should we have Mr. Wylie H come to the pension office since he spends so much time studying us. I would love to discuss his views,” Tettamant wrote.

About a half-hour later, Lawson replied: “Wylie??”

At 1:54 p.m., Tettamant responded from his iPhone: “Forward to AS.”

“AS” are Snyder’s initials. His full name is Arlis Michael Snyder III.

At 4:09 p.m., Snyder commented again, posing as Eley. He challenged Wylie H to “belly up to the bar and call or write Mr. Tettamant directly.”

“You might be surprised, Mr. Tettamant just might invite you in for a chat and coffee,” Snyder wrote. “Who knows?”

The email exchange between Lawson and Tettamant was obtained by The News through an open records request. It was among hundreds of pages of records that pension officials tried to withhold by appealing to the state attorney general’s office, which ordered the emails released.

Asked why Tettamant wanted to contact Snyder that afternoon, Lawson responded by email, “Richard wondered if someone else might have better social media search skills, since the system’s and my brief effort to search for a way to contact Wylie H had not proved fruitful.”

Snyder added by email: “I told Mr. Lawson I would try. I did not inform Mr. Lawson how I intended to make that attempt, nor did he ever ask.”

‘Value honesty’

Using aliases, Snyder has frequently launched personal attacks against the media, accusing reporters of bias and dishonesty. In one post, he said he found reporters “notoriously unlearned” and questioned their motivations.

“I greatly value honesty,” he wrote. “Show all the cards and let me assess for myself their value. I smell an agenda at work here, the reporters may not know they are being puppeteered, but I smell a rat.”

Last month, Jo Heinz, CEO of the interior design and architecture firm Staffelbach, criticized pension officials’ handling of the glare issue in the Dallas Business Journal. Snyder then attacked her in a posting on Schwarz’s Facebook page.

“Talk about arrogance and ignorance,” he wrote. “If Heinz is such a building wizard and thinks a solution that has not been explored could work, put up or shut up Jo. Blather is cheap.”

Heinz, told that Snyder was behind the comments, said they were unsettling.

“It’s really sad that they would have to resort to this type of tactic,” she said.

Last year, after local writer and art curator Christina Rees assailed a Museum Tower official on Facebook, pension lawyers fired off a letter calling her comments “harassing and disparaging.”

He said that if Rees’ comments resulted in someone backing out of a condo purchase, “the resulting judgment against you could take decades to pay.”

The lawyers did not stop there. Rees was working for Texas Christian University at the time, and the pension lawyers threatened to sue the school as well. They sent copies of the letter to the chancellor and other school officials.

The letter demanded that Rees remove the comments from her Facebook page or face legal action, and then it ended: “Best wishes this Holiday Season.”

In an interview, Rees said she deleted the Facebook posts but thought the pension’s letter was over the top.

“I thought it was a terrible, bullying, nasty, petty thing for them to do, and I wasn’t surprised,” she said.

Public opinion

Because it is a private institution, the Nasher is not subject to public information requests. The pension system, on the other hand, receives more than $100 million in city tax funds each year. As a government institution, it is subject to the Texas Public Information Act.

Pension officials sued the state attorney general seven times in the past year after that office ordered the release of records to The News. The newspaper has filed more than 100 records requests in an effort to understand the workings of the pension fund.

In letters to the attorney general, Lawson argued that release of the information would put the pension system at a disadvantage in anticipated litigation with the Nasher.

“It was with this litigation in mind that the system’s attorneys and consultants conducted investigations, completed research, prepared memoranda, and provided legal advice to the system,” Lawson wrote.

The public relations battle between the pension system and the Nasher comes down to condo sales. Nasher supporters hope that an outcry over the glare will slow sales, forcing pension officials to modify their tower.

For pension officials, it’s critical to move public opinion on the glare issue far enough to sell the units, most of which range from roughly $2 million to $4 million. Otherwise, the pension fund’s $200 million investment will be a loser.

So far, seven months after the tower’s opening, only six condo units can be seen in Dallas County deed records as sold. Pension officials say additional sales have yet to show up in the public record.

Last month, pension officials launched a renewed public relations effort to advance their message that altering the Nasher’s roof is the only way to solve the glare problem.

The effort included news releases and websites to highlight scientific and engineering reports commissioned by the pension system. It also included a video narrated by Snyder — the first public indication of his involvement.

Helping with the rollout was Spaeth Communications, a prominent firm that has handled clients such as the Dallas Arboretum and the Dallas Independent School District. The firm is most famous for its involvement in the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” campaign, which in 2004 cast doubt on the war hero status of former presidential contender John Kerry.

The campaign was a major factor in Kerry’s defeat, and “swiftboating” has since become a widely used term for smearing someone’s reputation.

In the fight over glare, it’s difficult to know where the legal and publicity efforts end and the search for a solution begins.

Lawson wrote in a letter last month to the attorney general that it “still appears that only litigation can and will resolve this more than $200 million dollar dispute.”

stevethompson@dallasnews.com; gjacobson@dallasnews.com

Follow @DMNInvestigates on Twitter and Facebook

AT A GLANCE Legal costs in glare fight

Dallas Police and Fire Pension officials have said they’ve spent more than $1 million over 18 months trying to find a solution to the glare problem with the Nasher Sculpture Center. Much of that, they say, has been billed through their lawyers. Legal invoices for April 2012 through May 2013, obtained by The Dallas Morning News, offer these details:

The pension system was billed about $900,000 in connection with Museum Tower.

About $570,000 of that went to experts and consultants.

More than $340,000 was billed in additional legal fees for work on open-records issues.